This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention that is recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Advances in digital video coding have enabled the adoption of video into personal communication such as video telephony over mobile communication networks, capture and sharing of personal digital videos and consumption of video content available in internet services. At the same time, perhaps the most significant breakthrough since the addition of color into moving pictures is happening: moving pictures can be viewed in three dimensions, and from different viewing angles. Again, digital video coding is enabling the adoption of this technology into personal, widespread use.
In order to facilitate communication of video content over one or more networks, several coding standards have been developed. Video coding standards include ITU-T H.261, ISO/IEC MPEG-1 Video, ITU-T H.262 or ISO/IEC MPEG-2 Video, ITU-T H.263, ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Visual, ITU-T H.264 (also know as ISO/IEC MPEG-4 AVC), the scalable video coding (SVC) extension of H.264/AVC, and the multiview video coding (MVC) extension of H.264/AVC. In addition, there are currently efforts underway to develop new video coding standards.
The Advanced Video Coding (H.264/AVC) standard is widely used through digital video application domains. A multi-view extension, known as Multi-view Video Coding (MVC), has been standardized as an annex to H.264/AVC. The base view of MVC bitstreams can be decoded by any H.264/AVC decoder, which facilitates introduction of stereoscopic and multi-view content into existing services. MVC allows inter-view prediction, which can result in bitrate savings compared to independent coding of all views, depending on how correlated the adjacent views are. As no new low-level coding tools were introduced in MVC, existing hardware implementations of H.264/AVC are typically applicable as such for MVC.
Many display arrangements for multi-view video are based on rendering of a different image to viewer's left and right eyes. For example, when data glasses or auto-stereoscopic displays are used, only two views are observed at a time in typical MVC applications, such as 3D TV, although the scene can often be viewed from different positions or angles.
In multi-view video coding, video sequences output from different cameras, each corresponding to different views, are encoded into one bit-stream. After decoding, to display a certain view, the decoded pictures belonging to that view are reconstructed and displayed. It is also possible that more than one view is reconstructed and displayed.
Multi-view video coding has a wide variety of applications, including freeviewpoint video/television, 3D TV and surveillance.
As multi-view video coding is becoming more popular and its applications are increasing, there is a need for solutions that further improve the efficiency and quality of multi-view video coding.